THE GREAT WESTERN el Y DEBATEIf these points seem to be mildly atodds - well, nowhere above does it saythis is going to be simple.A central point in this debate is: Whofirst said "Western civ"?"I did," says Soloway. "That was an ideathat never came from [the Popes]." ButSoloway did not get to the dean's office bythinking that John William Pope and hisson, Art Pope ' 78 - staunch conservativespolitically - were passionately interestedin the "Complete History of the FlowerPeople.""You take into account things theymight be interested in," he said.A year later, a group of angry facultywould be accusing the administration ofletting the Popes shape a curriculum.Soloway said he and others in the col-lege had been talking about Western civ fortwo or three years. Almost all of the com-ponents of a cohesive program in Westernciv already are in the undergraduate cur-riculum - but the "cohesive" is not. As thecurriculum has grown and veered from thenotion that you have to know Greek andLatin, Shakespeare and Chaucer, an empha-sis on requiring Western civ has vanished.As Joe Ferrell ' 60, secretary to the fac-ulty, explained, students are expected toknow a much broader range of subjectsthan when he was a student, and there areno more hours in the day."I frankly think it would be a very pop-ular minor," Soloway said.Speaking up for the idea of a morestructured study in Western civ, PeterCoclanis, former chair of the historydepartment and now associate provost forinternational affairs, said the availablecourses weren't presented to students in asequential way - a savvy adviser might beable to arrange what would amount to aWestern civ minor, but only if the studentknew to ask.Later, faculty members would counterthat there was no mention of Western civin a recent major overhaul of the under-graduate curriculum scheduled to go intoeffect in 2006. Sue Estroff, professor ofsocial medicine and former chair of thefaculty, said that if, for instance, the chan-cellor said, "Hey, let's do Western civ," "peo-ple would have said, 'Huh, what?' The ideawould get eviscerated, Popes or not, on anytop- 10 campus."A committee of faculty members wasappointed to spend part of last summer20Mal' / ] " n e 2 005drafting a proposal. They were offered$1,500 each from a $25,000 up-front grantfrom the donor for agreeing to interrupttheir surnmer plans. Some didn't accept themoney, and the offer of it caused some fac-ulty to cry foul. Soloway said that thestipends were not a usual thing but that asubstantial amount of money was at stakeand the Popes wanted to move quickly. Atthe time, the administration determinedthat the program the University proposedwould cost on the order of $3.5 million.The committee designed a course ofstudy called "Studies in Western Cultures:Exploring the Legacies of Western Tradi-tion." It required a two-semester "gateway,".. -.nrt<IIDGI•• • _'" u g- .. ----q.- ----- o-r-~~~~-'= 1 l,. .....__... ~,..1\' 1" ( ",'"",IT"' 1---- c-...Of1loo....._. 8D:!Ibe"OlmsUc"......riap- mtbilbirarn:UNC-OIapdHilcOlne I_.-- 0.. 1........,..-"..._~~=~ ..--- -----... -.------- -_...__...- .- .......... _.... "' _=_ =-- ; n.__.n_._ _.n_.~c;;- _c.-...~....._~"::..o:.::..":':l=-":''':::::'~--''-''--.--­:.::::::::.====:.-::-o..:..--:--.... __n._..-......._..-___c-o...., ,___"",._--",______.".__C---'l. __n..~ .. ... __.......".. __i-~~~a:g:~S~=::.:~a:~~.s.-_ ....__..__...__.._ ...0.-.____ -_.Many Carolinafaculty do notmince words about the center's Vliebsite. Freedom ofspeech is onething, they say; the Pope Center'spersonal attacks go over the line.or introductory course, followed by thecompletion of three additional courses, oneof which would be a narrowly focusedseminar. It also required either a foreignlanguage course or a seminar abroad -study abroad is now a key element in manyareas of the curriculum.This was designed to lead not to a majoror minor but to a certificate, which attests,as defined by UNC,"to the achievement ofexpertise in a well-defined area ofstudy."English Professor Reid Barbour ' 82, whochaired the committee, acknowledged thatthis might be valuable for a science or busi-ness major with limited time to spend onthe humanities but who wanted a roundedexperience. He said that, with the exceptionof the gateway courses, the courses in theproposal already were in the curriculum.Barbour and the other members of thecommittee would discover later that thePopes wanted more. Somewhat to theirchagrin, the proposal would be changed toa Western civ minor.Biting criticism - too personal?In a recent column on the Web site ofthe Pope Center for Higher Education Pol-icy, Director George Leef not only ques-tioned the value of a UNC minor inLatino/Latina studies, he posed the question,"Is it even true that there is a 'Latina/o' cul-ture to understand?"A UNC first-year seminar by ProfessorAlice Kuzniar that uses the dog to explorerelationships between human and animalworlds won Pope Center writer JonSanders' Course of the Month award: 'Justwhat the crud is Canine Cultural Studies?"Sanders wrote."We simply haven't thespace to answer such questions as: Whydoes the German Dept. offer Canine Cul-tural Studies? What, is barking now a Ger-manic language? Is UNC-CH reallypulling our legs?"Sanders, who has said the term "PodunkCollege" was a good analogy for Carolinaand who refers to the opposition to thePope Western civ program as a"campfirehorror story," also gave his award to eco-nOrrllCS Professor Sandy Darity for his sem-inar on "Social and Economic History ofthe Black Presence at UNC Chapel Hill."Sanders ruled the course "academic navel-gazing, subject matter hardly tangential tothe discipline the course is listed under, useof multicultural justification to ward off theprevious two criticisms, plus professorstricking undergrads into doing theirresearch for them."Leef said the Carolina Covenant, a two-year-old program through which low-income students can work their way throughCarolina without incurring debt, "seems tobe another of those 'feel good' measures sobeloved of public officials, generating somegood PR, but accomplishing nothing."The Pope Center publishes research onhigher education, looking at issues such as